Sales Engineer — Grounded
Detroit, MI (in-person)
About Grounded
Grounded is a 25-person Detroit-based startup building modular electric platforms for specialty vehicles. We take cab chassis from OEMs like Ford and Harbinger and build configurable vehicle systems on top, serving mobile healthcare, RVs, command centers, food and beverage, pet care, and more. Our customers include Colgate, Nokia, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and Portland PD. We've raised ~$5M in VC funding and are shipping vehicles in market today.
We also build our own software: a mobile app, fleet dashboard, and onboard computer system that lets customers monitor and control vehicle systems remotely. We design, fabricate, and assemble everything in-house at our facility in Corktown.
The Role
We're hiring a Sales Engineer to be the technical bridge between our customers and our engineering team. Grounded's vehicles are modular and configurable, serving everything from mobile healthcare to command centers, so every deal involves translating a customer's real-world needs into a vehicle that can actually be built. You'll own that translation.
This is also a key role in our biggest strategic effort: moving from custom engineering on every deal toward a modular platform where vehicles are configured from a library of modules. You'll be closest to the patterns in what customers ask for — and you'll help define the modules and the configurator that let sales scope vehicles without an engineer.
What you'd actually do
Partner with account managers on technical discovery, scoping, and solutioning for customer deals
Translate customer requirements into vehicle configurations, feasibility assessments, and accurate specs
Be the technical voice in sales conversations — demos, site visits, and the hard questions
Work with engineering to determine what's standard, what's a new module, and what's truly custom
Help build and maintain the module library, configuration logic, and customer-facing configurator
Create proposals, technical documentation, and scopes that engineering can build against
Feed recurring customer needs back into the modular platform roadmap
What we're looking for
5+ years in sales engineering, solutions engineering, applications engineering, or technical pre-sales
Engineering background or strong technical fluency — ideally mechanical, electrical, automotive, or hardware
Able to hold both the customer conversation and the engineering reality, and translate between them
Strong communicator who can make complex things simple for non-technical buyers
Comfortable with ambiguity and a fast-moving, configurable product
Startup or small-company experience a plus
Nice-to-haves
Experience with configurators / CPQ, parametric design, or modular product lines
Background in vehicles, EV, commercial equipment, or specialty manufacturing
Familiarity with CAD (Siemens NX a plus) and HubSpot
Compensation
Competitive base salary + meaningful equity in Grounded + comprehensive health insurance
Why this role is different
You'll sit at the most interesting intersection at Grounded — between what customers want and what we build — and your insight directly shapes the modular platform that determines how the company scales. It's part sales, part engineering, all impact, with the variety of dozens of verticals and direct collaboration with both sales and engineering leadership.